


Supernatural Ficlet Dump

by yellowturtle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s02e22 All Hell Breaks Loose, Episode: s05e04 The End, Episode: s06e20 The Man Who Would Be King, Episode: s08e21 The Great Escapist, Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, M/M, mostly sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowturtle/pseuds/yellowturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin. A collection of the short things I've written that aren't long enough to be posted individually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End Coda

There were times when Dean couldn’t sleep at night. 

There were times he thought about the aborted future, the one he had helped avoid. Often he brushed it off easily. If Gabriel could pull entire tv shows out of his feathery ass, it probably wasn’t too difficult for Zachariah to create a fake post-apocalyptic future. 

But there had been something about it. Something that rang true. Something about that Cas, the scruffy guy with the ill-fitting shirt, who wanted to bang a few gongs before the end of days. The fallen, broken shell of an angel who was far too quick to smile.

That goddamn smile, how it had haunted Dean. The real Cas never smiled like that, big and toothy and easy. But there was no happiness behind that smile. It was as if its owner was constantly laughing at some inside joke that nobody else understood. As if he knew a huge secret that he found absolutely hilarious. As if he had peeked behind the curtain and seen the meaning of the world, had finally understood all the answers to all the questions, and had found it so absurd that he just  _had_  to laugh, had to keep laughing at everything to keep functioning. To stay sane. To stay alive.

And Dean had felt oddly drawn to that Cas. His education was spotty at best, but he imagined that this was the way artists were like. Poets. Musicians. People who lived fast and fully, and died young. Careless, directionless beings who saw the world differently from everyone else, who saw the way things truly are, and effortlessly attracted the attention of lesser men. Dean had never been partial to the drugged up hippies, preferring the bad girls he could defile easily, or the nice ones he could put on a pedestal. But Cas… He had been saddened yet fascinated by the almost stranger wearing his friend’s face, hurtling through his life like a fallen star. Sometimes he envied his future self. Despite everything, Cas had his back. They were broken, but they had held on to each other through the years. And when asked to sacrifice his life on a suicide mission, Cas had said yes flippantly.  Without any hesitation. He had ridden to his death with a handful of pills, following the righteous man until the end.

And sometimes Dean thought of his Castiel, the real one, who abandoned him again and again to fleet around God knows where. Dean never knew what the hell he was doing. Never even knew if he was alive. He thought maybe Cas didn’t care about his anguished prayers, that he didn’t know how. Maybe this time the angel would never come back at all. He would die somewhere far away, and Dean would keep waiting for him until he went mad.

And Dean wondered which one, in the end, was truly worse.


	2. Halo

"What the hell is this?"

"Hmm?" Dean looked away from the road, his fingers tapping idly on the steering wheel to the beat of a Journey song.

"This?" Sam said incredulously. Inside Dean’s boxes of old cassette tapes, he’d found a sleek new iPod. "When you died and I hooked an MP3 player to your Baby, you told me that I douched her up! You’re such a hypocrite."

"Oh, that thing? It was um… a gift. From someone. Yeah," Dean said evasively.

"What songs do you have on here?" Sam scrolled down the list of artists. “ACDC, Aerosmith… Well no surprise there. WAIT, WHAT? HAHAHA BEYONCE? Oh my God!"

"Screw you," Dean growled as he tried to snatch the small gadget out of Sam’s hands. “Some of her songs are kind of catchy, all right?"

"What, like Halo? Is it your favorite song? Do you know all the lyrics, Dean? Do you listen to it when you miss your ange…" He snickered as Dean shoved him in the face.

Dean was absolutely furious and mortified. He seemed ready to either kill Sam or himself. “Sometimes I wish I’d let you rot in hell," he mumbled miserably.

"I love you too," Sam replied brightly.

Sam stayed quiet for a few minutes, biding his time. When he was sure that Dean had finally let his guard down, he bellowed, " _Everywhere I’m looking now! I’m surrounded by your embraaaace_ …"

"SHUT UP, SAMMY."

" _Baby I can_  - hahaha -  _I can feel your halooooo, you’re my saving graaace_!"

"I WILL DYE YOUR HAIR WHEN YOU SLEEP."

“ _You’re everything I need and mooore, it’s written all over your faaace_ …"

"YOU’LL BE BLOND TOMORROW. YOU HEAR ME? BLOND!" 


	3. Maybe the Human Perspective is Limited (TMWWBK Coda)

maybe the human perspective is limited

maybe the angels would call it an abomination  
maybe the demons would call it karma  
maybe sometimes God looks down at us all  
scrambling in the mud, and he laughs and calls it a farce  
maybe the angels should have tightened their ropes  
and hanged themselves in their obsolete paradise  
it’s just another brick paving hell with good intentions  
but in his eyes there is only grief and betrayal  
when he sees the monsters we become for love.


	4. They Grew Up Heroes (All Hell Breaks Loose Coda)

> _\- I couldn’t let him die, Bobby. I couldn’t. He’s my brother._

Bobby knew the reason why John liked to drop the boys at his house. It certainly wasn’t because of his innate prowess with children, though he did what he could. Nor was it because John and him were particularly close friends. John didn’t really have friends. He only had enemies and non-enemies, and Bobby happened to fall in the latter category most of the time. He didn’t travel as much as the average hunter, but his relative stability of location still wasn’t quite it either. The real reason why the boys were occasionally dumped on Singer Salvage’s doorstep was because of Bobby’s status as one of the most well-known hunters in the country. Over the years, he became an invaluable part of the North American hunting community, amassed a heap of obscure lore, and saved most everyone’s asses more than once. Naturally, John decided that old tough-as-nails Bobby Singer was an adequate candidate for teaching his children how to hunt when he was too busy to do it.

And in that regard, Bobby knew himself to be a disappointment. He was too attached to those stupid little morons to thrust such a dangerous lifestyle upon them. Dean hovered around his little brother like a mother hen, making sure he was clothed, and fed, and loved, and expecting only reprimands in return. He always seemed so surprised when someone took care of him, made him breakfast and changed his sheets, or paid off a neighbour to babysit Sam for an afternoon so he could drive Dean to the park and play catch just the two of them. He was wary, always so wary at first, as if he expected all kindnesses to be traps, and so grateful when no punishment came. Quickly, the gratitude turned into deep, unconditional love, because the poor boy couldn’t help loving too much. And Sam was such a bright little thing. He was so eager to see what the world had to offer, so happy to learn its secrets. But each year he looked a little sadder, a little more disillusioned about his life. Much earlier than Dean, he’d discovered that adults weren’t superheroes who always did the right thing. “I like being here, Bobby,” he’d whispered one dusty summer afternoon, Dean’s enthusiastic tinkering on a decrepit old Lincoln putting him well beyond earshot. “It almost feels like having a proper home.”

Sam died young. Much too young. None of Bobby’s letters of recommendation and faked transcripts could keep the kid away from the cursed lifestyle permanently. For a while Sam truly seemed to be out, and Bobby had foolishly started to believe he’d end up with a proper future. But the worst was Dean, stupid, stubborn Dean, following his father’s footsteps one last time. Even after all these years, he still hadn’t found anything to live for. He still put his brother’s life above his own. Dean never considered getting out, because he never thought he deserved better than getting ganked in a back alley. On some things, he’d never possessed Sam’s courage. And Bobby hated himself for not being able to save either of them, for watching Sam become blinded enough by revenge to trap himself in the past, for staying in the sidelines while John turned Dean’s childish ability to love into something needy and unhealthy and twisted, for letting the best thing about Dean become his eventual undoing. When he looked at Dean’s face he didn’t see a handsome young man who’d witnessed too much for his age. He saw a little boy. HIS little boy, condemning himself to eternal torment. And it broke Bobby’s goddamn heart.


	5. The Great Escapist Coda

What do you do when you finally get the thing you prayed for? When the one person you need the most, the way you need your brother’s smile, or the smell of your car, or the numbing comfort of your dreams, finally makes his way back to you? When the months of feverish, shameful pleading are rewarded with your hopes bleeding against the cold asphalt?

What do you do? Do you laugh? Do you wrap him in your arms? Do you cry tears of joy? Do you pretend that you’re not embittered by the silent separation? Do you shiver at the memory of your bones crunching under his fist? Do you bury your fingers in his stupid coat and crush your shallow breath against his mouth and never ever let him go?

Do you still dare to love?  
Do you still dare to forgive?  
Or do you hurt him before he can hurt you again?


	6. Mary's Boy

Imagine Dean Winchester at about twenty something years old. Back when he thought the hunting life was honourable, when it was still all about saving people and hunting things - the family business - rather than heaven and hell and purgatory and fallen angels in trenchcoats. Back when his father’s orders were still the center of his world, when Sammy and baby were the only bright patches in his life. He was just a heart-breakingly gorgeous boy being dragged around from kill to kill in seedy bars and dusty roads, dancing green eyes full or mirth and flirtation rather than the shadows of hell. And young, despite all his burdens. So young.

And maybe John worried sometimes, because Sammy was cute as a button, sure, but Dean? Dean was absolutely beautiful. As beautiful as Mary once was and more, and one time John came back late from a hunt, a lot later than he expected but the boys are tough and they can deal, and Dean’s mouth was swollen and his hair was a mess and he was hiding a wad of cash in his socks. When John asked him where the money came from, Dean easily came up with some hollow lie. John said nothing because it was easier to pretend he didn’t know, and he’d always preferred to bury his head in the sand and watch the things he loved rot and fester rather than face the monster he’d let himself become. Sam never even had a clue. Dean had lied to his brother for his entire life, and Dean was good at it. And maybe John always favoured Sam because he turned out ok, his spirit was intact and his grades were good, and he was proof that John hadn’t been a complete bust as a father. But Dean… it was too late for Dean. Every time John saw his eldest son’s face, young and guileless and still so quick to fall in love with the entire world despite the fundamental brokenness inside, he was reminded of every way he had failed him. His own beautiful boy, the sweet little thing John had rocked to sleep a different life ago. And Dean looked so much like Mary.


	7. A Prayer (Sacrifice Coda)

This was all they truly had. Just  _this_.

Heaven wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Even before it spat out its residents, it was just an echo chamber of glittery memories, unchanging and fake. One more lonely cage to keep the angels’ playthings in line, though the winged dickwipes made sure to gild it. And hell, well… A few years ago Dean would’ve said with certainty that he could never get over that place, but the additional sorrows of being alive kept sanding down the memories until the edges of the trauma became blunted and almost bearable. Maybe it was something to do with the resilience of the human psyche or whatever. Still, hell was very much the worst thing that could happen to anyone, and Dean had no intention of stepping back in there if he could help it.

But life, their short pitiful life, it was worth more than the slow millennia that stretched out in front of the damned and salvaged souls. This,  _this_ , was what mattered. What counted. Not even because of the ultimate destinations that awaited each and everyone of them, but because people were left to create their own paths full of little mistakes and joys. In the short window between the void and eternity, humankind could  _be_. He supposed it came down to free will in the end, like most things seemed to.

Dean had resigned himself a long time ago. He was ready to spend his precious remaining time on earth waiting for his hopes and dreams to come back home someday. Broken or fixable. Dead or alive. He’d wait until his very last breath if he needed to. Because his future and his choices belonged to him alone, because he still wielded the freedom they’d fought so hard to keep, and he knew the dumb son-of-a-bitch in the trenchcoat was easily worth a lifetime and more anyway.

He wanted to be bitter, but somehow felt no regret.

And that was how Dean Winchester finally understood what it means to have faith.

*****

_Dean._

_Dean._

_I’m so sorry. I need you too. I’m coming to you. Wait for me, Dean._

_Dean._

_Please don’t give up. Please don’t let go._

_Amen._


	8. Mary's Boy #2

Often, John Winchester hated his eldest son.

He was a living remainder of every promise he didn’t keep. Every mistake he’d ever made. The boy had Mary written in every curve of his face. Beautiful, young, and charred into ash,  _his_  Mary, the woman he tried to drown every night until she blurred at the bottom of an amber bottle.

 He hated the way he never questioned his orders. Dean followed his every word to the letter because he was soft, and he was a fool. He seemed to honestly think that John was  _just_. “Dad knows what he’s doing, Sammy,” he’d say. What kind of person would have faith in anything in this wretched world? Mary had faith in her empty sky, and Mary was dead. Dean would wind up the same way someday. There was no place for goodness in this shithole, no place for selflessness and blind faith. Sammy understood at least that. 

"I hate you," he muttered one night, pointing at Dean with his fist curled around a bottle of jack. He regretted his words immediately, and so he kept going because he deserved the pain. "You’re just like your mother." He took a swig. When the last few drops fell on his tongue, they burned like holy water on a demon’s skin. "There ain’t no God, kid. And if there ever was, he’s an asshole who watched your mother burn. Where are your fucking angels now, Mary?"

There were no angels watching over any of them. They were all going to hell.


	9. Destiel Kiss Headcanon #2

"I’m in love with you."

Propped up against the side of the Impala, wounded by their last-ditch kamikaze attack, barely slowing the torrential blood pouring out of the hole in Dean’s shoulder with a balled-up trenchcoat, Castiel stared at him as if he’d gone crazy.

Deliriously, it occurred to Dean that his timing could’ve been better.

"No." The angel began shaking his head. He dropped the bloody cloth onto the cold asphalt while he struggled to stand up. The deep gash in his side leaked blue beneath the improvised bandage of his slender fingers. "How dare… How can you… You do  _not_  get to say this to me.”

So he didn’t love him back. He didn’t… He didn’t love him.

"Huh. Alright," Dean sighed, exhausted. No, obviously not. Stupid to even hope. Cas was an old, colossal thing, and what little of him he held on to had been slipping away for some time now. "What the hell would you do with a mess like me anyway?" he wondered quietly.

A superhumanly strong hand knotted into Dean’s shirt and clumsily pulled them both to their knees. “I was  _done_  with you,” Castiel spat in his face. “I died for you, I would follow you into oblivion even now, and yet you never stood by me when I needed you most. I was finally putting you behind! Why drag me back every time I untangle myself from you? Why can’t you let me be? How can you be so  _cruel_?”

Dean had seen that look before, and expected an all-too-familiar fist to smash into his teeth. Instead, Cas paused for a brittle, swelling second before cupping Dean’s temple inside his palm. He stared dizzily as the flesh of his shoulder slowly - too slowly? - knit itself back together.

He vainly tried to push him away. “Cas, I said no. There’s a hole in your stomach. You’re weak.”

"Don’t tell me what to do."

Illuminated by wisps of grace, the angel’s eyes seemed impossibly blue. Dean slumped against his throat, exhausted, unable to meet those eyes. The warm skin against his nose smelled like thunder. Like a salt and burn. Like the stunned silence after battle. He whispered, “Did you ever want me? Was there a chance for us?” as Castiel’s pulse fluttered against the tip of his lips.

"Dean, we’re both… You know how we are. You know the decisions we’ve made. Maybe there never was a way." If Dean closed his eyes, he could hear the wreckage in the angel’s voice. And he’d stood his ground against pain and destruction, weathered unimaginable loss, but in the end there was only one thing in God’s creation that could make Castiel give up on Dean Winchester. Only Dean himself.

Then Castiel’s mouth pressed against his own, soft and dry, and faintly apologetic, his hand cradling the heavy burden of his head like a pillar. It was only then that Dean understood he’d lost Cas for good. There was  _nothing_  left behind the kiss. It was hysterically unfair that something he’d craved for so long had soured into meaninglessness, and that the universe needed to rob him of even this.

"Goodbye, Dean."

Dean didn’t remember falling asleep. When he opened his eyes, his shoulder was unblemished. A bloody trenchcoat covered his lap. Castiel was gone.

 

( _One day, about a million years later, Castiel let himself remember. ''Was there a chance for us?'' he heard in a voice that was still somehow familiar. And though his answer hadn't changed, he wondered. He felt very tired. But across the chasm of time, Dean didn't know about the tired old seraph still rolling Dean's voice in his mind eons after his death. When he clutched a bloody trenchcoat to his chest and said, ''So angels do have heartbeats,'' no one heard him._ )


	10. Just Tell Him Already

Dean sucked at goodbyes. 

"Be  _careful_ , Cas. Keep yourself out of trouble. If you get hurt, I’ll kick your ass, capiche?”

Castiel frowned squintily in the morning sunlight.

In the beginning, Dean thought maybe all angels did this, that they all stared confusedly at a world they didn’t quite comprehend. But no, it was just Cas. Maybe he was the only one who cared enough to bother figuring it out. “I have celestial powers,” Castiel rumbled. “By leaving you two, you are losing my protection, not the other way around. And you would not be capable of inflicting any physical damage to my ass with your foot.”

"I know, I know," Dean sighed. Did Cas look just the slightest bit smug, or was he imagining things? "I mean, you can’t blame me for worrying about you sometimes. About your safety. I’ve lost you often enough. Every time I let you go, you always show up with… with black goo in your body, or with some feathery dickwipe controlling you, or dead. I can’t take… Come back safe this time, alright? Come back  _whole_. I… We’ll be waiting for you right here. Please.”

Jesus, he was  _terrible_  at goodbyes. 

He stuffed a cellphone in Castiel’s hand before he could embarrass himself further. “You better goddamn pick up when I call,” he mumbled. He tried very hard to sound threatening, and all he managed was a gruff fondness that made him sound like Bobby.

"Be careful too, Dean." Castiel’s hand suddenly curled protectively around his fingers, trapping them against the phone. "I worry about you constantly too. But as long as you still remain, I will always return to you. I promise. You don’t know how precious… "

Dean snatched his hand back like it was on fire. “Heeey, buddy. Good. Fine. Um, just, just don’t get killed, ok? Ahem.”

Castiel opened his mouth as if he had more to say, but chose against it. “Goodbye Dean.” He nodded determinedly before slamming the door to his stupid-looking tan car.

And that was the closest to ‘I love you’ they ever got with each other.

*****

Sam rolled his eyes.

_Fucking idiots._


	11. Mary's Boy #3

The only thoughts running through Dean’s mind as the stranger pressed him against the greasy bricks of the bathroom stall were,  _I can’t get arrested again, dad would kill me. This is the only way._

_Do it for Sammy._

And it didn’t cost him anything. Just one more chunk of his innocence, and what did that matter? He’d been cracked since he was four. And he couldn’t let Sam go hungry, not ever.

"Such a pretty mouth…"

The man swayed on his feet as he trailed sloppy kisses down Dean’s neck, his stubble scrapping against the tender skin of the boy’s chin. A sweat-slick palm snaked under the helm of Dean’s shirt. He jumped, before gritting his teeth and closing his eyes. 

"Uh. Are you alright, kid?" the man slurred. 

Dean opened his eyes. His face was covered with tears.

The stranger blinked hard. Dean thought he saw the fog of alcohol lift a bit. “How old are you, boy?” the man mumbled, his breath laced with vodka and cigarettes and shame. 

"Sixteen," Dean spat out. His voice didn’t shake.

Dean started to breathe again when the heavy weight of the adult body pressed against him disappeared. “Oh. Oh, Jesus. What am I… What am I doing?” The stranger shook his head. He passed a trembling hand through his thinning hair. “I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t mean…” He stuffed a wad of bills into Dean’s shirt pocket. His eyes might have looked kind if they’d met under different circumstances.

Dean let himself slide down onto the piss and vomit-cacked floor, his legs unable to hold him up. He sobbed with his head between his knees, and from then on his skin never quite felt clean again. No matter how many showers he took. No matter how cleanly he shaved.

Sam would never know how far Dean would go. He couldn’t. If he knew, he would never forgive Dean. 


End file.
